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the 92 New Year’s Eve snow, from Obstruction looking toward Orcas

With New Year’s Eve around the corner, we are reminded of our first New Year’s Eve on the Island and our kind of normal.…

I had no idea, when I decided to go to Mother’s Mattress Factory one night early in 1981, that I would be meeting my date for our first New Year’s Eve on Orcas. I thought I was going to Mother’s to hear my friend Annie sing with the Fabulous Mudtones and – newly separated from the good doctor – prove to myself that I could.

Our view through a dusting of snow

Wishing you and yours the best for the coming year.

waves coming in off Rosario

Do you remember what you were doing the day of the 1993 Inaugural Day Storm?  I couldn’t exactly but in 1993 we were building our main house on Obstruction Island. “Oh THAT storm!” I said when I looked it up in the year’s journal.

 Skagit Blizzard

It is that time of year and as the white stuff swirls down aren’t you tempted to try to paint it?  You could always frame a blank piece of paper and label it “Whiteout.”

All right.  This is a joke, but it is also a hint about how to paint snow.  It is all there.  What do you need to do to convince the viewer that the white of your paper is snow?

Buster, in all sedimentary paints, 1983

About thirty years ago the watercolor world began to talk about pigments as Transparent, Staining and Opaque.  At that time the thinking was — you choose your subject and then choose your pigment grouping: transparent for delicate subjects, stains for bold, opaque for earthy. What seemed to happen in practice was that artists came to prefer one grouping over the others

 “That’s worth the price of the class!” When someone sings this out in a class — after I have just made a helpful hint aside — I always cringe. I hope not.  But when you have struggled for ages with something and then hear a solution that sounds so easy, you think you might have paid to have known that.

One such time was when a man who had an arsenal of brushes — a huge array, displayed in a pleated stand-up carrier — cried out after I had just banged my brush on the bottom of the water container and said, “If you REALLY want to get the paint out of your brush, don’t just swish it in the clean water, but jump it up and down against the bottom of the container.”

Most of those who use the technique corner are from the Pacific Northwest and while some of this month’s challenge will be specifically to you, there is no reason why those of you in other areas can’t adapt these ideas to a show near you.

Yesterday the NWWS 70thAnnual Open Exhibition, 2010 catalogue arrived in the mail. This is an extremely strong show.
Paisley Madronas, my entry which was not included.

As we move closer to the Winter Solstice, the sun drops as though someone hit a light switch: one minute we are in the sunset’s golden glow; the next – it’s dark!  When I first moved to Obstruction Island in late November of 1992, I was still learning how quickly the bright day switched to black night.

Bad Boat on a Good Day

It was a cool November day, bright and sunny. I was off to town and taking Bad Boat.  The tide was swinging hard and the current was running fast as I crossed to the county dock on the Orcas side.  I came into the dock, making a U to get my starboard fenders against the dock. The current was trying to sweep the boat backwards and under the approach ramp.

 There are fewer than 10 commandments in watercolor. One of the most important is the answer to the question, “How much water?”

You need to always be asking yourself, “How wet is my paper? And with that amount of wet, how much water and how much pigment should I be using?”